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Guilty, but not responsible? | Rosalind Englishhttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/may/29/will-neuroscience-change-criminal-justice
Monsters are born, not made: the latest round in the debate about criminal responsibility questions the very existence of intuitive morality<p>The US neuroscientist Sam Harris claims in a <a href="http://www.samharris.org/free-will" title="">new book</a> that free will is such a misleading illusion that we need to rethink our criminal justice system on the basis of discoveries coming from the neurological wards and MRI scans of the human brain in action.</p><p></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/may/29/will-neuroscience-change-criminal-justice">Continue reading...</a>UK criminal justiceLawNeuroscienceScienceEthicsPhilosophyPrisons and probationSocietyUS supreme courtTue, 29 May 2012 15:01:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/may/29/will-neuroscience-change-criminal-justiceJessica Hill/APDr. William Petit Jr, right, arrives at court in New Haven, Connecticut for the trial of Joshua Komisarjevsky. Petit's family were killed in a particularly horrific attack. Photograph: Jessica Hill/APBlack Star / Alamy/AlamyA brain scan MRI.
Photograph: Black Star / Alamy/AlamyRosalind English for the UK Human Rights Blog, part of the Guardian Legal Network2012-05-29T15:01:29ZSupremely confident: the legacy of Sandra Day O'Connor | Rebecca Lowehttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/aug/30/us-supreme-court-george-bush
An interview with the former US Supreme Court justice who was at the centre of George Bush's controversial election<p>After graduating in 1952, Sandra Day O'Connor couldn't find a law firm willing to give her a job. Nearly 30 years later, she was the first woman appointed to the US Supreme Court, a milestone for women's rights.</p><p>Sitting serenely on a cream sofa in her Savoy suite overlooking the Thames, O'Connor describes shooting her first coyote as a child. &quot;We kept a rifle in the truck wherever we went and if we saw a coyote, I'd shoot out of the window. You were bouncing along so it was hard to do, but we needed to kill them to stop them eating our small calves.&quot;</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/aug/30/us-supreme-court-george-bush">Continue reading...</a>US supreme courtGeorge BushLawAbortionJudiciaryRepublicansRonald ReaganWomenTue, 30 Aug 2011 15:12:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/aug/30/us-supreme-court-george-bushJ. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/APSandra Day O'Connor waves after her unanimous confirmation by the US Senate to the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on September 21, 1981. Photograph: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/APJ. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/APSandra Day O'Connor waves after her unanimous confirmation by the US Senate to the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on September 21, 1981. Photo: AP/ J Scott Applewhite Photograph: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/APRebecca Lowe for the International Bar Association blog, part of the Guardian Legal Network2011-08-30T15:12:00ZEuropean court of human rights to hear El-Masri rendition casehttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jun/15/elmasri-european-court-human-rights
Obama administration should own up to the truth as first rendition case related to "war on terror" reaches European Court of Human Rights.<p>&quot;You are in a country with no laws,&quot; rendition victim <a href="http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/litigation/macedonia">Khaled El-Masri</a> was told by his U.S. captors in the Kabul prison known as the Salt Pit. He was kidnapped and abused by the CIA, and held in inhuman conditions for some five months. He was never allowed to contact his family, a lawyer, or representatives of his country of citizenship (Germany). He was never charged with a crime or brought before a judge. When the CIA finally recognised it had an innocent man, he was dumped on a roadside in rural Albania, without explanation or apology. The US has yet to acknowledge its role in his ordeal.</p><p>Such treatment should shock the conscience of any nation governed by the rule of law. But US courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, have <a href="http//www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/oct/09/usa.germany">refused to give Khaled El-Masri a chance</a> to tell his story and receive justice. His case was thrown out under the 'state secrets; doctrine—essentially telling El-Masri and other rendition victims that whatever U.S. government agents do in the name of the &quot;war on terror&quot; may be entirely outside the reach of the law. Even if that means handing someone over to foreign torturers for proxy interrogation, which was the fate of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/binyam-mohamed">Binyam Mohamed</a>, the other rendition victim featured in this video. (Mohamed was recently released from the Guantanamo prison, also without redress or apology.)</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jun/15/elmasri-european-court-human-rights">Continue reading...</a>RenditionEuropean court of human rightsUS supreme courtBinyam MohamedCounter-terrorism policyTue, 15 Jun 2010 16:49:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jun/15/elmasri-european-court-human-rightsDarian Pavli for the Open Society Blog, part of the Guardian Legal Network2010-06-15T16:49:29ZReligion and the judiciaryhttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jun/07/religion-judiciary-supreme-court
Recent tensions show that we cannot continue to ignore the religious beliefs of our judiciary.<p>The nomination by President Obama of his solicitor-general Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court to fill the post vacated by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has led some commentators to note that, if her nomination is approved by the US Senate, the US Supreme Court will no longer number any Protestants on its bench. It will, instead, be made up of six Catholics (Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Sonia Sotomayor) and three Jews (Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the putative Justice Elena Kagan).</p><p>The socio-cultural reasons for the disappearance of the male WASP from the US Supreme Court are difficult to pin-point precisely; and what its significance might be is again hard to discern. Indeed, for some it is thought indecorous even to allude to the religious/cultural background of any the justices. On this view the very taking of the judicial oath involves newly appointed judges wholly disencumbering themselves of their past individual cultural baggage, and assuming for the future a wholly objective approach to the law, untainted by considerations of where they came from and how they got from there. Thus, a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/11/100111fa_fact_collins">wise Latina from the barrios </a>should reach precisely the same decision for the same reasons as a prudent country club WASP. Since justice is blind, one can and should be blind to the justices. At the same time there are some tensions with this view. In his essay &quot;<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/sep/27/the-supreme-court-phalanx/">The Supreme Court Phalanx</a>&quot; first published in (2007) 54 New York Review of Books, (Number 14, 27 <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/contents/20070927">September 2007</a>) and re-published as Chapter 4 of his The Supreme Court Phalanx: the court's new right-wing bloc (New York: New York Review Books, 2008) at 47-48) Professor Ronald Dworkin, in his fury at many of the decisions emanating from these first five years of the Roberts court, has described the five Catholic male justices to constitute a &quot;right wing phalanx … guided by no judicial or political principle at all, but only by partisan, cultural, and perhaps religious allegiance&quot;.</p><p><br />&quot;We cannot … conceive of circumstances in which an objection [of apparent judicial bias] could be soundly based on the religion, ethnic or national origin, gender, age, class, means or sexual orientation of the judge.&quot;</p><p>&quot;18. I am concerned that judges are unaware of these basic issues on the Christian faith; further it is difficult to see how it is appropriate for other religions to be considered by the Judiciary where the practices are further removed from our traditions.</p><p>19. It is for this reason that I support the application by Mr McFarlane for his appeal to be heard under the direction of the Lord Chief Justice and a freshly constituted five member Court of Appeal.</p><p>&quot;18. Lord Carey's observations are misplaced. The judges have never, so far as I know, sought to equate the condemnation by some Christians of homosexuality on religious grounds with homophobia, or to regard that position as &quot;disreputable&quot;. Nor have they likened Christians to bigots. They administer the law in accordance with the judicial oath: without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. ….</p><p>23. The general law may of course protect a particular social or moral position which is espoused by Christianity, not because of its religious imprimatur, but on the footing that in reason its merits commend themselves. So it is with core provisions of the criminal law: the prohibition of violence and dishonesty. … But the conferment of any legal protection or preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however rich its culture, is deeply unprincipled. It imposes compulsory law, not to advance the general good on objective grounds, but to give effect to the force of subjective opinion. This must be so, since in the eye of everyone save the believer religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence. It may of course be true; but the ascertainment of such a truth lies beyond the means by which laws are made in a reasonable society. Therefore it lies only in the heart of the believer, who is alone bound by it. No one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jun/07/religion-judiciary-supreme-court">Continue reading...</a>UK supreme courtUS supreme courtReligionMon, 07 Jun 2010 19:15:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jun/07/religion-judiciary-supreme-courtPublic DomainStanding, left to right: Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore 61, Lord Mance 66, Lady Hale 62, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe 71, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood 72, Lord Collins of Mapesbury 68, Lord Clarke of Stone-cum Ebony 66. Front row: Lord Hope of Craighead 71, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry 65, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers 71, Lord Saville of Newdigate 73. Photograph: Public DomainAidan O'Neill for the UKSC blog, part of the Guardian Legal Network2010-06-07T19:15:07ZSupreme courts around the world: more women in the US supreme courthttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/may/13/kagan-supreme-court-women-judiciary
Obama's new nomination for the Supreme Court sparks debate about the representation of women in the judiciary<p>On Monday, it was announced that Elena Kagan has been nominated by President Barack Obama to replace retiring US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/apr/09/john-paul-stevens-retire-supreme-court">said to be</a> the most left wing of all Justices of the US Supreme Court) when he stands down this Summer. If her nomination is confirmed by the Senate, Ms Kagan will be the fourth ever female Justice of the US Supreme Court and will take the number of women currently serving up to three (joining <a href="http://http//www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx">Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor</a> on the bench).Born in New York in 1960, Elena Kagan grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and later attended Princeton University, Oxford University and Harvard Law School. She served in the Clinton administration between 1995 and 1999, before being appointed as Dean of Harvard Law School in 2003. Last March, Ms Kagan was appointed as the 45th Solicitor General of the United States. Interestingly, until this appointment Ms Kagan had never fought a case in Court: the majority of her legal work to date has taken place in the classroom rather than in the Court Room. Ms Kagan has never before served as a judge and at 50 would be the youngest member of the US Supreme Court. </p><p>As would be expected, Ms Kagan's nomination has sparked debate about the representation of women on the bench. The Guardian's Afua Hirsch yesterday <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/may/10/women-minority-judges-judicial-reform/print">commented</a> that the English judiciary should also be making judicial diversity a priority, noting that although 37% of judges in the tribunal service are women, and that females make up 19.4% of the judiciary as a whole, all the heads of division are men. Add to that the fact that only three of the 37 members of the Court of Appeal and only one of the UKSC Justices are female, and it is clear there is work still to be done here.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/may/13/kagan-supreme-court-women-judiciary">Continue reading...</a>LawUS supreme courtGenderEqualityWed, 12 May 2010 09:56:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/may/13/kagan-supreme-court-women-judiciaryPablo Martinez Monsivais/APIn this May 10, 2010, photo, President Barack Obama introduces Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his choice for Supreme Court Justice in the East Room of the White House in Washington. As they prepare for a Supreme Court confirmation fight, (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/APLaura Coogan for the UKSC blog, part of the Guardian Legal Network2010-05-12T09:56:00Z